We were discussing Elizabeth I over lunch when my friend John Austin remarked we should make a list of the “great women” of history and study their biographies. A cursory look through the nonfiction in my own library for biographies of women turned up, among hundreds or biographies of men, no more than a dozen.
I also found and finished reading Famous Women, a volume of sixteen brief biographies published in 1899. The authors were nasty bigoted snobs, lovers of royalty and worse gossips than any clutch of old women. The writing is good. “Beauty having been a crime, and nobility of birth treason, Josephine did not have many surviving competitors.”
Followed by the primary sources of their fame in parentheses these Famous Women are Judith (legend), Aspasia (wife of Pericles), Cornelia (mother of two Caesars), Cleopatra (lovers), Ayesha (wife of Mohammad), Joan of Arc (self), Isabella (herself), Catherine de Medici (herself and her children), Elizabeth (herself), Christina (wealth), Madame de Maintenon (herself), Mary Washington (mother of George), Maria Theresa (herself), Catherine II (herself), Marie Antoinette (wife of Louis VI), Josephine (wife of Napoleon), and Victoria (what she didn’t do).
Searching for greatness in women or men fails for want of a definition. Isabella, Elisabeth I, and Catherine II had hair touched by auburn. Red hair does not serve. Their contemporaries judged most of the Famous Women as exceptionally intelligent. Intelligence is not greatness. Most were royal. Royalty does not serve. Nor do madness, greed, a talent for cruelty, religious motivation, or a lack of integrity. Fame or prominence defines these women better than does greatness but are not its synonyms to modern minds. Some are famous only through their fathers, husbands, children, or their lovers not for achievements. Greatness is more than fame. Fame alone is not enough but fame combined with enduring achievement may be enough to qualify men or women for greatness. If so, few those considered here are great though all of them were either famous or infamous.
My struggle to define greatness continues in Notes for an Essay on Greatness, the current conclusion of which is that “greatness is historically significant achievement acknowledged in a public arena”. Isabella, Elisabeth I, Maria Thersea, Catherine II, and Victoria most nearly qualify as candidates for greatness by that not quite satisfactory definition. It may well be that Frenchmen treat women with more love, respect, and equality than do the Englishmen but England has been uncommonly well served by its queens.